To:ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI

Written:Written not earlier than August 4, 1915Published:First published in 1924 inLenin Miscellany II.

      Sent from Sörenberg (Switzerland) to Christiania (Oslo).

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages200-201.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

Wewere very glad about the statement by the Norwegians
and your efforts with the
Swedes.[1]It would be devilishly
important to have a joint international statement by theLeftMarxists! (A statement of principle is the main thing,
and so far the only thing possible.)

Roland-Hoist,like Rakovsky (have you seen his French
pamphlet?), like Trotsky, in my opinion, areallthe most
harmful “Kautskians”, in the sense that all of them in
various forms are for unity with the opportunists, all in
various formsembellishopportunism, all of them (in various
ways) preach eclecticism instead of revolutionary Marxism.

Ithink your criticism of the draft declaration does not
show (unless I am mistaken) any serious differences between
us. I think it mistaken in theory and harmful in practicenotto distinguish types of wars. We cannot be against
wars of national liberation. You quote the example of
Serbia. But if the Serbs werealoneagainst Austria, would we
not beforthe Serbs?

Theessence of the thing today is the strugglebetweenthe Great Powers for the redivision of the colonies and the
subjugation of the smaller powers.

Awar of India, Persia, China and so forth with Britain
or Russia? Would we not beforIndia against Britain, etc.?
To callthat“a civil war” is inexact, an obvious
exaggeration. It is extremely harmful to stretch the conception of
civil war beyond measure, because thatblursthe essence of
the question: a war of hired workers against the capitalists
of aparticularstate.

Itis the Scandinavians, apparently, who are falling into
a petty-bourgeois (and provincial,kleinstaatisch) pacifism,
repudiating “war” in general. That is not Marxist. One
has to combat this, like their rejection of the militia.

Onceagain greetings, and congratulations on the
Norwegian declaration!

Yours,Lenin

[1]Thisrefers to the statement by the Norwegian Left Social-Democrats
that, in principle, they agreed with the resolution Lenin had draft ed for
the Left Social-Democrats to present at the first International Socialist
Conference. The Norwegian Lefts were later supported by the Swedish Lefts.